When A.B. students in the Class of 2026 hunker down to write their theses next year, they will be the first to earn course credit.
A.B. students in the classes of 2026 and 2027 will now be required to earn 33 units of credit in order to graduate, with the senior thesis now counting as two credit-bearing courses. For the Class of 2028 and beyond, A.B. students will be required to earn an additional credit for a total of 34, although this will include one or two units of credit from the junior paper (JP), depending on each academic department’s approach.
Nothing will be changing for B.S.E. students whose 36-credit requirement already includes two credits for the thesis. For A.B. students in the Class of 2026 and beyond, their “theses would be transcripted with a formal course credit in each of the fall and spring terms,” according to a faculty meeting agenda. Despite the apparent increase in credit requirements, students will not be expected to take any additional courses.
The proposal was officially approved by the faculty Committee on the Course of Study (COCS) on April 2, 2024 before being approved in a faculty meeting.
Associate Dean for Curriculum and Assessment Rebekah Peeples GS ’09 told The Daily Princetonian that the requirement for A.B. students to fulfill nine credits during their junior year “might look like more requirements, [but] it’s actually not.” She added that, “for some departments, it might actually be less than what we are asking students to do right now” in reference to the effort that will be required of A.B. juniors.
Regarding the delayed adjustment to 34 credits for A.B. students in the Class of 2028, Peeples explained that “some students might want to adjust their course load in ways that anticipate the junior and senior independent work a little bit differently.” She added that waiting for the Class of 2028 to implement the new model “made sense because we didn’t want to ask departments to rethink their entire independent work sequence at the same time.”
This change comes following recommendations from the University’s Council on Teaching and Learning’s recommendations from 2021 that A.B. departments should formalize a ”Junior Methods” course for their majors. This course would “provide a shared forum for either writing a fall JP (in majors where students are asked to write two independent semester-long JPs) or for writing a formal proposal for future JP research (in majors that adopt a single year-long JP).”
The study also stated that the University should develop “additional scaffolding to support students in completing their capstone independent work in their major fields of concentration.”
Each department can choose whether the JP counts as one or two courses, so students’ experiences will differ. Currently, there are also differences between departments. For instance, the Department of Astrophysical Sciences requires two JPs, while the Department of Economics has one year-long, double-credit project.
Kelly Noonan, a senior lecturer in Economics and the director of the department’s Junior Independent Work (JIW) process, said she believes that the two credit-bearing courses will be positive for students.
“I think it will be good for the students so that they realize it really is a fifth course. It will justify their work, and I think if it makes more students invest in it because they take it as a real course, it’s a great thing,” she said.
Noonan and Peeples anticipate that the new credit-course structure will not significantly alter the content which juniors and seniors encounter during their current JP and senior thesis experiences. For Economics specifically, Noonan explained that the process will still feature the lectures, workshops, data analysis, and a prospectus submission over the winter recess. She also believes that the writing of the JP in the spring semester will continue to be more self-guided and independent.
“Since [the change] is not until 2026, we haven’t really formalized how we will actually implement this specifically in the department, so I’m not sure what will happen with our spring JIW,” Noonan added.
Although these changes will revamp the credit system for the JPs and senior thesis, Peeples said that she envisions this change as one more rooted in academic policy that will not require much adaptation for students.
Isaac Bernstein is a staff News writer for the ‘Prince.’ From Pittsburgh, Pa., he most commonly covers new academic departments and majors, progressions in faculty research and pursuits, and the most recent happenings of Princeton’s alumni.
Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.
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